I am fascinated by the stories of pirates. Not the despicable savagery that it was in reality, of course, but the imaginary with which we grew up as children based on hidden treasures, hidden cities, and underwater secrets waiting to be discovered by someone brave enough to go one step further.
And in this mixture of exciting fantasy and cruel reality, right in the center, is the story of Port Royalthe submerged city of Jamaica that has inspired dozens of stories about pirates and one of the best card games I’ve had the opportunity to try.
The reality behind the myth of Port Royal
Located in one of the bays of Jamaica, the area was known as Caguay until the arrival of the English in 1655, who finished perverting the island after another almost 150 years of Spanish occupation. The area was then renamed Port Royalalthough beyond official papers, in reality the whole world knew it as the Sodom of the New World.
Converted into the busiest port in the British colonies, Port Royal it was a mixture of alcohol, piracy and prostitution that grew like foam during the years of splendor of that era of looting and crime.
More than 200 square kilometers of bars and illegal businesses that made the area one of the richest in Jamaica and a paradise for piracy, because the English, who did not have enough troops to resist a Spanish counterattack, encouraged the influx of pirates so that they would be the ones in charge of protecting the island.
After betraying them to create a new order in which the slave trade would take over the city in 1687, revenge against the English was not claimed by pirates or Spaniards, but by an earthquake that in 1692 buried the bay and caused great tsunamis until almost completely sinking it.
Despite taking the lives of half the population, around 3,000 people, it did so in such a way that the city was submerged without destroying part of its buildings, which now allows divers and archaeologists to visit the submerged city to walk around the sunken streets once walked by some of the most famous pirates in history.
How to play Port Royal
It’s funny how sometimes the things that are furthest away from each other are capable of revealing stories as interesting as this one. And it is that despite Port Royal It’s one of those names that easily comes to mind -perhaps because of the Port Royale videogame, without going any further-, actually I recently discovered the details of it thanks to the card game of the same name.
With a simplified and fun mechanic designed for you to tempt luck as those same pirates did, the back of all the cards have a coin that will be used to acquire ships and characters with which to try to win the game.
The idea is that, starting with a handful of coins, we discover cards from a central deck until the one we really want to buy comes out because it will allow us to get closer to that victory. The problem is that if we draw a repeated card, we will lose that opportunity.
The twist is that the rest of the players will be able to buy everything that we have left on the table to acquire, from new ships to expeditions or character cards that allow us to add more perks, so we will have to be attentive and, often, acquire things that we did not have in mind to stop the rival.
With different modalities, including a campaign mode for a player, I admit that what I enjoyed the most about Port Royal was its Hoist the Sails expansion, an aspect with simplified rules and a much more agile game that brings it closer to other card games of the style such as ONE or Love Letter. If it catches your eye at all, it’s worth giving it a try.
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